


A Taste of This

by fourteenlines



Category: Chocolat (2000)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22252696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourteenlines/pseuds/fourteenlines
Summary: Stolen kisses like stolen chocolate.  Joséphine wants.  Joséphine remembers.
Relationships: Josephine Muscat/Vianne Rocher
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	A Taste of This

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Yalena for the Femslash Ficathon 2004. Props to Sophia Jirafe for organizing this, and assigning me something that allowed me to write in such an obscure fandom. Beta by Anna/themoonbar.
> 
> Originally posted 3/1/2004.

_"As for myself, mine was a deeper drouth: I drank and thirsted still."_  
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

+++

Afterward, on some nights, Joséphine would fold in on herself, wrapping back into her dress and sweater as if the covering did some good. She was not a truffle to be wrapped in tin and hidden from watering mouths.

"It is a sin," she would say.

Vianne's eyes would linger on her, and then she would sigh and look away. "I don't believe in sin," she would say lightly, sometimes shaking her head or shrugging. Her nimble fingers would straighten her collar or buckle her belt. "And I don't think you do either. So how can it be a sin?"

And Joséphine would nod, reluctantly. She would have another chocolate and another kiss before she went to bed. Vianne would crawl in later, and they would sleep with Anouk between them.

+++

During the day it was easy to forget. There was no danger in daylight, and it was the danger that drove her to Vianne's side. Serge was not yet awake, and he wouldn't think to come banging on the door until hours after sundown.

A glance out the window showed her the church, reminded her of a God she was uncertain she believed in. Kindness could certainly mask cruelty, as it had when Serge had married her, the disgraced collaborator's daughter.

Joséphine hated this village and its customs, its small way of viewing the world. It was the reason she was drawn to Vianne, and had been from the moment the woman and her daugher blew in on the wind.

She'd learned the story of Vianne's mother in a piecemeal fashion from Anouk. Or rather, Anouk had assured her that Pontouf wanted her to know. Anouk had solemnly told her this was her mother's most precious secret, and Joséphine must not tell a soul.

No one would listen to Joséphine anyway, but she did not tell that to Anouk.

To have roots, even crippled ones, in far-off lands and exotic cultures was as fanciful a desire as Joséphine could imagine. It was something Joséphine yearned for, in a way she could never fully articulate.

But it was not for her. She was only Joséphine Muscat, sometimes crazy, sometimes immoral, always a resident of this town and the daughter of a scorned man, the wife of a disappointed one.

She wanted Vianne, but sometimes she hated her too, because through Vianne, all she ever got was a taste of freedom.

+++

It was in the darkest hours, just after midnight, that the impossible became the inevitable. The rhythm of their work wove a spell over the dimly-lit kitchen. Chopping nuts and grinding cacao, blending with cream into exquisite chocolate. It was during hours such as this that Joséphine might believe in herself, that Vianne's hands might linger on her skin. It was in those hours, too that Serge might disrupt their peace with loud shouts and violent blows.

There was also the lingering possibility of Anouk stumbling sleepily down the stairs in search of her beloved mother.

"I don't want her to feel any stranger than she already does," Vianne replied when Joséphine asked her about it, as they dressed hurriedly afterward.

Only once did Vianne unwrap Joséphine with care, drizzle chocolate over her skin and suck it off in one long, luxurious feast. It was on the kitchen floor after the frying-pan incident, and Joséphine tried to ignore the cold coming off the old stone. She shuddered and bit her lip and a secret part of her thanked Serge for his violence, for driving Vianne nearer to her, just like this.

There was never any indication that Vianne loved her, nor felt any affection for her beyond what she might show to all and sundry. She'd taken Joséphine in when there was nowhere else to go; she'd encouraged her to leave in the first place. She'd taken Joséphine to her bed and left her there to lay awake listening to two sets of deep breaths.

There was never any indication that this was any more than another facet to the kind of secret girls' club that she ascribed to. Armande had Vianne's true devotion and Joséphine had a slice of Vianne's desire, on lonely, cold nights.

+++

The boats went up in a great blaze and Vianne's wet dress clung to her body. She was covered in mud and clutching Anouk like it was the end of the world tonight and nothing else was worth consideration.

Joséphine escaped without incident, the merriment of food and dancing forgotten, the flirtatious glances aimed at people she was not dancing with forgotten, all of it forgotten in the look on Vianne's face.

There was guilt. It was an expression Joséphine had seen only fleetingly, but she knew it well. The guilt that crept over Vianne, not at any moral outrage, but because she happened to be momentarily focussed on someone other than her daughter.

Vianne, therefore, had been with Roux.

The next day Armande died. Serge left town. Joséphine suddenly found possibilities open to her she had never dared to covet.

She coveted other things instead; things she had no longer.

+++

Joséphine is destined to unhappiness. She ponders this sometimes on long winter nights. It comes too easily after an evening spent chopping the heads off chickens for the next day's luncheon at Café Armande.

The fact that she cooks now, as she never did for Serge, is perhaps Vianne's doing, as with so much else.

She remembers those short, hurried nights in the kitchen at Chocolaterie Maya, stolen kisses flavoured like stolen chocolate. Joséphine presumes she never had a right to either. But Vianne's soft flesh under her fingers would quiver as if buffeted by a strong wind.

She sometimes will pass Roux in the town square, and she knows she should see a kindred soul. An outcast like her, who was pulled into Vianne's sphere and the good it can do. She cannot wish him harm, but sometimes she imagines what it would be like if he were to leave. Vianne would come to her, clearly upset but trying not to cry. She would bury her head in Joséphine's bosom and...and who knew what would come about then?

But Roux will never leave Vianne. Joséphine can see it in his eyes. He carries the same hunger she does. Hers is sharper than his, however; she has had a hungry soul from the day she was born, and her life has afforded her fewer opportunities for indulgence.

She has had only a taste. It is never enough.

Joséphine huddles by the fire and wonders why she must always want what is not her own.


End file.
